Sunday, July 1, 2012

Marielle Ravosa--- Media and The Ecological Indian

While reading
Shepard Kretch’s The Ecological Indian, I
found myself astonished by the sizable role that the media plays in our perception
of the past. During the initial chapters of the book, Kretch explains how
Indians were broadcasted to the general public. Images of a tearful Indian spread
the message that “Pollution: [is] a crying shame” (1). Because the Indian denotes
that pollution is a disgrace, he indisputably implies that white people, not
Indians, started pollution. Due to this widespread idea, children are generally
taught in school that Indians did nothing to contaminate the environment and
reused and recycled their belongings. However, the former is not always the case;
the “body of evidence suggests that the Indians also wasted animals killed at
communal hunting sights” (143).When the
Indians hunted bison, they “butchered [only] three of every four…or left
untouched one of every four” (144). Hence, we see here that the Indians could
be wasteful—this subsequently proves that Indians were not the flawless environmentalists
we esteem them to be.

Furthermore,
we learned that Indians set fires. While these fires did sometimes help forests
and grasslands, they were not always beneficial. When they were “too frequent
or too hot, when moisture [was] low, or when heavy rains follow[ed] fires and
cause[d] erosion, plants may not [have] easily recover[ed]” (116). Fires also “sometimes
destroyed horses and other property and even occasionally torched men and women”
(121). Thus, while it is seems that the Indians knew how to properly deal with
the environment, they essentially were not perfect and did not always do the
best things for nature.

Because
Indians were portrayed as seamless environmentalists, many people think that
they were superior to the polluters present today. However, we must learn to
look at the media with a more watchful eye. Advertisements should be read with
a grain of salt, as they are meant to persuade people of a certain cause, and
not necessarily of the truth.